A modest, soft-spoken type whose achievements in the guitar world would justify plenty of immodesty, John Woodland does leap to his creation’s defence at one point in our conversation, when I mistakenly reverse the cause-and-effect that saw a simultaneous explosion in both offset-style guitars and Mastery Bridge products around the early 2010s, a trend that remains buoyant to this day.
Upon my suggestion that the boom in the Jazzmaster-inspired market must have really helped launch Mastery’s success, Woodland politely replies, “I really think Mastery Bridge was a large part of that.”
当然是。随着2008年这座指数性更具功能性的桥梁的到来，并在此之后不久就在市场上的扩散以及加入它的坚固，更可靠的颤音，这些笨拙，时尚，但否则易被宽松的吉他突然变得更加可行。演奏吉他手 - 结果，每个人都开始将它们驱逐出去。但是，在掌握精通的眼光甚至是创作者眼中的一线希望之前，就很早就形成了伍德兰的设计精神。
北部暴露
伍德兰（Woodland）于1972年出生于明尼苏达州的剑桥，尽管他的父母并不是特别音乐，但这种驱动器遍及大家庭。他说：“当我们拜访我的祖父母的家时，我的叔叔，堂兄和亲戚都弹吉他和班卓琴，而我的祖母则演奏了器官。这只是一个给定的，你带了吉他。”
伍德兰（Woodland）在四岁时就赠予了他的第一把吉他，他被一位精通传统乡村音乐的叔叔弹奏 -Johnny Cash时代。卡尔·史密斯（Carl Smith），法隆·杨（Faron Young），罗伊·阿克（Roy Acuff）。”自称是一个“非常糟糕的学生”，伍德兰并没有吸引基于学术的职业，也不确定他实际上能否以谋生为生。但是，自从他十几岁的时候就一直沉迷于这件事的好奇心，将吉他拆开，将它们放回原处，修复和修改它们，这似乎表明了他未来的途径。
“我父亲是电工，”他告诉我们。“我们在这个国家长大，我父亲要我学习一项交易……我一直从事设计，并认为这可能会做更多的事情。因此，我去了19岁的红翼技术学院学习乐器设计和维修。我可能是班上最糟糕的学生，但我是第一个被录用的人。”
在他仍在学习的周末和之后的全职工作时，林地在明尼苏达州东伯特利的卢瑟尔·罗杰·本尼迪克特（Luthier Roger Benedict史蒂夫·雷·沃恩（Stevie Ray Vaughan）, among others, before his untimely death in 1994.
伍德兰回忆说：“他和我会砍伐树木，从中造出吉他。”“他一生做了很多烦恼，以至于他的手臂变得不好。他教了我很多关于fret工作的知识，关于木匠的完美之处在于琴师的完美之处，而对于琴师来说，完美的东西对于珠宝商来说并不是完美的。他告诉我，您需要为自己认为可以接受的自己设定一定程度的完美水平。”
十年后，这种精确度将大大帮助林地，但与此同时，有吉他可以维修和设计。
阁楼上的玩具
Parallel to his passion for guitar design, Woodland has long had a fascination with the unsung pioneers of the industry. His pursuit of knowledge in this arena has significantly informed his own work, while also leading to a few discoveries that are noteworthy by any measure.
“There are people in the industry who haven’t really been written about who are extremely important to the lineage of the guitar,” he says, “and one is John Deichman, who worked at C.F. Martin. He was factory foreman, and he drafted the OM and dreadnought guitars. I think it was 2004, shortly after Mike Longworth passed away – Mike wrote the history book on马丁吉他在60年代后期，很长一段时间以来一直是该公司的历史学家 - 我去了那里研究了1910年代为奥利弗·迪特森公司（Oliver Ditson Company）制造的一条吉他，事实证明这是无畏的。
“我去那里遇到了[C.F.董事Dick Boak。马丁博物馆和档案馆在2018年退休之前]，迪克（Dick）将我带到了北街工厂的阁楼上，该工厂被锁定了数十年。我们打开了它，自1930年代以来，大约有400,000个文档没有被阅读。只有银行盒充满了信件和文件，从本质上讲，我们知道的是现代美国平坦吉他的历史。它的设计方式，为何设计，谁设计了它。那里有很多信息。我问迈克为什么从来没有接触过这些东西，答案是：“迈克不喜欢爬楼梯。”
In short, Woodland had hit the jackpot. During frequent visits to C.F. Martin in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, from his base in Minneapolis where he was working in repair for Willie’s Guitars, he plumbed the trove and laid out documents on big tables in the attic for a thorough perusal of the history of Martin guitar design in the early part of the 20th century.
伍德兰回忆说：“我们开始经过旧工厂和新工厂，从十几岁到30年代找到所有这些吉他的模板。”“我找到了C.F.马丁·高中（Martin Senior）的个人钱包在木房里的盒子里。到处都有东西，那里没有档案室。克里斯·马丁（Chris Martin）在几个保险箱中有一些家庭用品和一些分类帐。
“I remember showing Chris that I found all of Perry Bechtel’s correspondence regarding the Orchestra Model guitar, which is really what defined the flat-top: a 14-fret, solid headstock guitar with a pickguard and a belly bridge. And so, I found how and why this guitar was made in 1929. I remember looking at Chris and saying, ‘This is not only the history of your company, but the history of the American guitar, which defined music as we know it.’”
表格遵循功能
More than just a fascinating trawl through the origins of the modern American guitar, though, the exercise greatly informed Woodland’s own work – which, as it happens, has included designing six guitars for C.F. Martin, as well as for makers such as BiLT and others.
“我从中拥有的主要外包之一，您可以对许多美国制造业进行这句话，这确实向我表明了（当时（当时）品牌形象确实是基于产品本身的。制造的旧方法是用最好的材料制作您可能能够使用的最佳产品，并让产品本身构建您的品牌形象。我认为，现在许多公司接近它的方式是从图像开始，并将图像金字塔降低到产品。
“One example was when Martin switched from bar fret wire to ‘T’ fret wire in 1934. They were contacting the Horton-Angel Company [a wire maker based in Massachusetts] and telling them to put a higher nickel content in the wire, because Martin used to roll bar fret wire at the factory for their guitars and they used a higher nickel content because it created a harder wire and it lasted longer. So, they’re corresponding with Horton-Angel and Horton-Angel is telling them, ‘Yeah, we can do it, we can change the alloy content, but it’s going to cost more.’
“这是在大萧条的高峰期，你知道吗？这是C.F.Martin III would use a pencil down to the eraser to save money, and Martin’s like, ‘We don’t care, this has to be the best possible wire you can make, and we’ll pay the added expense.’ And no one would have known otherwise. It’s nothing that they pitched, it was all about making the best possible product you could.
“这就是出售您的产品的原因；它不是广告，不是T恤，不是他妈的葡萄酒 - 公司现在所做的所有事情。其中很多是形式和功能的完美婚姻。传统上，在吉他行业中，形式遵循了功能，这意味着从历史上看，这条线的目的使它成为现实，而不是艺术。”
精通
Having discovered the extent to which form followed function historically in guitar design, that principle came very much into play in Woodland’s creation of the Mastery Bridge. As revolutionary as that product has proven, and as much as it has been taken up by the industry, he didn’t see it so much as a product with a potential market, but simply as the correction of an existing design flaw.
他说：“对我来说，精通桥就像一个维修一样。”“我试图计算到那时我一直在工作的吉他。我认为我已经修复了15,000吉他，因此精通的桥是解决一个五年历史的问题的解决方案，对我来说只是一次修复。”
伍德兰（Woodland）在他的工作台上设计了坐在威利吉他的工作台上的精通桥，这令人困惑地改善了爵士乐大师的多年生弱环节。他和团队列出了一些原始迭代的例子 - 具有特色的双弦鞍，四个语调螺钉和适合老式爵士乐大师的Thimbles的安装柱 - 当一定的替补席上时NELS CLINE2008年4月走进商店。
“杰夫·特威迪（Jeff Tweedy）自90年代中期以来一直是我的好朋友，”伍德兰说，“但我真的不知道尼尔斯，因为当时他对乐队[Wilco]很陌生。但是我知道他扮演爵士主人，他真的很好，所以杰夫介绍了我们和尼尔斯，我有点闲逛，我给他看了桥。”
As Woodland tells us: “He said, ‘Yeah, sure, put it on my guitar!’ He was playing at the Dakota Jazz Club that night. So, I went through Nels’s guitar and installed it – he got the third Mastery Bridge ever made – and I remember going to the show that night and was kind of biting my fingernails. It was an early version, the string spacing was off, it was plain brass saddles, it was like a prototype and I had never put it in the hands of an onstage touring musician. But he really liked it, and at the end of the night he thanked me in front of the audience and commented on the product.”
随之而来的是任何年轻设计师的梦想：伍德兰（Woodland）为克莱恩（Cline）做了几个，他们向他的朋友们传播了这个词比尔·弗里塞尔还有家伙声音青年…谁把其中的20个带走了他们在巡回演出的偏移中。猫王Costello紧随其后的是汤姆·韦拉恩（Tom Verlaine） - “我在2008年遇到了他，给了他一座桥，他喜欢它。这对我来说是一个非常自豪的时刻。使用的精通量越多，这些吉他就越可行。
“I think Mastery Bridge really made those guitars usable for people who played live,” Woodland muses. “Because offset guitars didn’t explode after涅rv。通过使这一功能更具功能，以便巡回音乐家可以在舞台上不受欢迎的情况下舒适地出门，我认为观众看到了这一点，吉他继续受欢迎，因为挡泥板当我们开始时，这些吉他的制作几乎一无所有。
“我记得有一天的挡泥板代表在威利（Willie）的一天，我向他展示了一个原型。那是在2008年，那时他们可能有两个爵士乐大师模型。我记得代表嘲笑我，并说：‘我们每年制造400名爵士主人。您将无能为力！’”
半圆形推理
“众所周知，精通桥，随后的颤音和少数旨在用于其他吉他的精通产品 -电视台,Rickenbackers，各种硬尾模型 - 在过去十年中蓬勃发展。不仅有个人玩家将他们作为替代零件吞噬，而且备受推崇的制造商，例如Novo,Koll,Yanuziello,Nik Huber,考尔,碰撞,BiLT, Creston,Deimel，收割机，Suhr, Scero and many others have employed them as original equipment. But the Mastery venture isn’t ending there; Woodland and the team have recently designed an entirely new pickup, the first run of which is just hitting the market. Like so much of Woodland’s work, however, these are not your drop-in replacements.
他告诉我们：“它们是完全不同的形状，我们将为建筑商出售一个路由模板。封面也由richlite制成，基本上是纸。他们实际上具有非常独特的声音。我正在与当地的Winder合作，我们正在这里做所有事情。我真的希望精通桥成为一家非常设计的公司。I don’t want to make Tele pickups and things that everyone else is making, because… I talk to people who do NAMM, and people in the industry all say, ‘Oh, how was NAMM?’ and it’s the same regurgitated crap that’s always there.”
除了在撰写本文时达到公开市场外，精通的拾音器（一种现代化的半圆形设计）已经出现在Nothing Guitar上，该吉他由Woodland设计，由Bilt设计，到目前为止，NILS Cline和Nils Cline和比尔·弗里塞尔。
伍德兰（Woodland）得出结论：“我正在尝试为独立的琴师制造产品，以便它们可以做得更好，并制造出比其他大型吉他制造商提供的更独特的东西。您必须制作一个人们不知道他们需要的产品，一旦他们看到它，他们就会意识到自己这样做。而且采用拾音器的方法就像在1920年代一样，以前从未有人这样做。形状看起来如何？采取完全不同的方法，只是尝试做可能有机的事情不同的事情。”
访问Masterybridge.comfor more information.